Out with Janet the other day we had two
oystercatchers fly by and I saw my first inland lapwing at the end of the
month. Lots of birds are now starting to
sing and the faithful great spotted
woodpecker is back drumming near the house.
Despite reasonable weather through February the birds are still
plentiful in the garden emptying the seed feeders each day and hammering away
at the extra large fat-cakes that I make and put out on the ground. Interestingly, the woodpigeons and pheasants
have also taken a fancy to the fat-cake
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| Starling on fat-cake |
reducing the cake to crumbs during the
course of a day, often aided by visiting jackdaws and rooks. Running out of lard for the fat-cake sent me
scurrying off down to the post office only to find they don’t stock the stuff
so I nipped round to Mr Mustard’s famous butchers shop and came home with a
couple of tubs of dripping. The “new”
cakes are now so hard they last for days and the birds are probably getting a
better source of nutrition as they dig for currants buried in the fat. Richard and Peta rang early one morning from
the chalet to report three bramblings at the chalet feeder but they didn’t stay
for long. I have also seen my first frog
of the year crossing a road, and whilst visiting daughter Ruth, a toad was on
the move possible
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| Photographers at Loch Mallachie |
heading for a nearby breeding pond. The days are lengthening and spring
(hopefully) is on its way. Despite this
increase in “other” species on the go the main bread and butter species remain
mosses, fungi and lichens, the latter, thankfully, changing little, despite the
season and a group worthy of tempting me out to go looking. The Loch Garten gull mystery goes on and two
visits made to see if any were roosting failed to find any at all. Perhaps the pickings at the Aviemore landfill
site are just too good and the birds are staying nearer their main food
supply. On my last visit in slightly
drizzly conditions I was surprised to see a gang of folk, in the
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| A rainy Loch Mallachie! |
gathering
gloom, right down at Loch Mallachie. My
hopes that they might have seen passing gulls was aimed at the wrong folk –
they were there to learn all about landscape photography, but with most cameras
covered with towels and poly bags and the far edge of the loch only just visible,
it would have been interesting to see if anyone ended up with a memorable
shot. A pity really, because Mallachie
often produces nice evening photos.
Once again the garage visit for car servicing
paid dividends. Leaving the car I headed
off down the River Spey, knowing roughly where I would be going but with little
knowledge of what would be found along the way in this seldom visited
area. I had just reached the path along
the bank of the river when my first stop was made to photo and GPS the location
of an unusual fungus growing on a fallen Scots pine branch. Initially, this fungus resembled those of a
jelly/brain type which featured in the last blog, but despite this one having a
jelly like appearance on the outside, its inner core is very white and quite
hard. It does though look enough like a
brain for me to have nicknamed it “pine brain” it’s common name
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| Tremella encephala cut in half |
however is trembling brain. This one is Tremella encephala (encephala I
gather means brain) and is most often found on dead conifer branches. These branches often play host to another
common fungus Stereum sanguinolentum and my pine brain is a parasite of this
fungus, often completely covering it host species. Cutting it in half helps identify it, the
hard white inner contrasting markedly with the brownish/pink gelatinous
outer. A good start to the walk. Further down river I started to notice quite
a few aspens mixed in with mainly birches so of course a visit was needed to
see if any had anything unusual growing on them. Too open, too dry, a bit young, not sure but
very little of note was found apart from the regular lichens. Heading up from the river past a very posh
fishing hut (the reason I could now see, why hundreds of metres of the
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| A brilliant display of Peltigera britannica |
river
bank had been mown!) I reached the end of a track which would lead me back
towards the garage. A series of old
quarry-like hollows just off the track tempted me in in the hope that there
would be something unusual in the moss or lichen groups but nothing of note was
found. A small track lead away from the
quarries and into quite a dense stand of junipers, heading I was hoping,
towards one of the main tracks in the Anagach Community wood. Just then my mobile rang with the man at the
garage checking what needed to be done and whilst on the phone I had a look
into one of the juniper bushes and found it had a good population of the lichen
Nephroma parile on its main branches.
Phone call finished I delved a bit more and other interesting lichens
were found on the juniper – time for a more serious look, so it was trouser
legs to the outside of my wellies and jacket hood over my head as I pushed my
way into the thicket of junipers.
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| Lasiobolus macrotrichus on roe deer droppings |
Despite these precautions some juniper needles found their way up my
sleeves and occasionally penetrated my trousers, but overall it wasn’t too
bad. I was just hoping that no one was
watching! Quite quickly my journey into
the junipers paid off when I found a tiny patch of Peltigera britannica and the
more I searched the more I found, some growing from juniper branches and some
growing up from the ground in leafy prominence.
What an unusual location for this lichen, but then how many folk have
shoved their way into
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| Lasiobolus macrotrichus hairs x600 |
juniper bushes to have a look… more about that anon. With a bit of care, it was possible to pick a
route through the bushes to the next gap and it was fairly obvious that roe
deer are just as daft as I am, as indicated by their droppings. If you are not into droppings – look away
now! On one set of droppings I could see
the oval pellets were covered in tiny white spots and when I checked a pellet
with my hand-lens I
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| Lasiobolus macrotrichus asci & spores x1000 |
could see that the spots belonged to a tiny fungus, a bit
like mini sea urchins. So camera out,
photo taken, and several pellets popped into a tube for checking later. Back home the roe pellets were wetted a
little and covered so the fungus wouldn’t dry out and once under the microscope
I was able to see the real beauty of this dung-munching fungus. Each fruiting body was about 1mm in diameter
and the hairs growing out from the main body were up to 0.8mm in length. Once a bit was “squashed”, lots of spores
were found, time to put my most recent purchase into action – Ascomycetes in
Colour by Peter I. Thompson. Despite the
book I was still left with a choice of Lasiobolus ciliatus or macrotrichus, so
a bit of help was needed from expert
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| Emerging from the Degelia plumbea juniper bush |
Liz who confirmed the latter, with few
records locally. More juniper bush
delving lead to a find of more Nephroma lichens but also Degelia plumbea in
Abernethy, the second time I have found this rare lichen locally on juniper in
Abernethy. Other searches though cost me
my brilliant Swiss army knife, as it slid out of my pocket whilst crawling
through more bushes in Abernethy. Must
learn to zip up ALL pockets whilst undertaking future bush crawling!
Early in the month I attended my first
meeting of the Highland Biological Recording Group as a committee member, quite
interesting to see how this very active group operates. Main commitment was to organise a tooth
fungus outing in September so just have to hope we get enough, but not too much
rain, in July and August to ensure a better fruiting season than 2013. Perhaps the most unusual outing for me was
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| Waiting for the doors to open |
accompanying Janet to Johnstons of Elgin for their annual tweed/fabric sale
and as we queued waiting for the doors to open, I wondered what I had let
myself in for. The doors opened and in
we went, Janet collecting rolls and pieces of tweed and me following
Sherpa-like, carrying the chosen items.
Job done, material purchased for Janet’s tweed crafts, and time for a
well deserved coffee before heading off, back down the road. A trip up the road to Carrbridge to check the
recently closed sawmill for any bargain basement fence posts turned out to be a
failure in that respect but quite useful in another. Finding the sawmill now completely closed I
drove on to the end of the road at Dalnahaitnach and spent a useful hour on the huge river sand and shingle deposits along the edge of the River Dulnain. It was obviously a
Peltigera month because in
several places
P. leucophlebia was found, one patch in identical leafy
prominence just like
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| Peltigera leucophlebia another great display |
its close relative found in the Grantown woods. As I arrived back home for lunch Janet
informed me that the Strathspey Railway had just been on the Scottish news,
showing the main sections of the new bridge over the River Dulnain being lifted
into place. This bridge is the current
major project being undertaken by the railway staff and volunteers. The railway
continues to replace the rails and infrastructure required as it makes its way
to its final destination in Grantown on Spey, with the crossing of the A95
trunk road still to be finally worked out.
I hadn’t heard about the railway bridge being ready to lift into place so
had missed the opportunity to
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| Installing the bridge over the River Dulnain |
photo the biggest girders being lifted. Knowing
the site it seemed fairly obvious that the crane and workmen would be there for
the day if not more, so the camera gear was packed in the car and with lunch in
hand I headed for the work-site. Lots of
people had had the same thoughts as me, probably after seeing the lunch-time
news, and the roadside verge and adjacent field had lots of parked cars. As I made my way down to the railway line I
could see that the most enormous rail-mounted crane was still in place, lifting
in the other sections of the bridge, along with lots of workmen in their bright orange jackets and overalls. Over the next half hour the bridge, crane and workmen were photographed from all angles, recording the latest hurdle to be crossed by the railway company as the line makes its way slowly towards Grantown. A few days later we both headed north for a day out at Nairn, stopping along the way for a bite to eat at a garden centre on the outskirts of the town. As we approached the lunch stop Janet pointed out a footpath sign by a bridge crossing the River Nairn indicating a riverside path running the three or four miles to Cawdor, perhaps worth checking out later. Lunch over we debated whether to buy our seed potatoes now or next month and in the end came away with just a packet of parsnip seeds. We parked up by the bridge and made our way onto the riverside path wandering through an amazing mix of trees, mostly quite old Poplars, possibly black poplar (
Populus x
Canadensis). The first flowers to greet
us were masses of snowdrops (
Galanthus nivalis), naturalised escapees and from
what we could see there were two varieties, the usual form and the double
petalled ‘flore pleno’ variety, all quite a bit ahead of our own flowers in the
garden. Wandering off the path a little
to look at a fallen log I came across the most amazing sight, a fallen tree
covered in lots of brilliantly red fruiting bodies of the scarlet elf-cup
fungus, a species I had only seen a couple of times before. Previously I had found up to ten fruiting
bodies but on this log, and on other logs nearby there were masses, certainly
several hundred – an amazing sight. From
earlier finds I was aware that there is the possibility of two species of
scarlet elf-cup locally, neither common, so a specimen would have to be taken
home to check. Under the microscope lots of spores were found but the critical feature was the type of “hairs” on the under-side of the cup, straight hairs and it would be
Sarcoscypha coccinea
(ruby elf-cup), curly hairs and it would be
S. austriaca. It turned out to be the latter with the bonus
being some of the spores had “budded” lots of secondary spores, a confusing
find until I managed to find a reference to this occurrence in the Collins
Fungi Guide.
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| Sarcoscypha coccinea on deadwood |
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| Sarcoscypha coccinea spore & secondary spores |
Event of the month, year, decade, displayed
itself on the 27 February. A few nights
earlier daughter Laura had phoned to say that there were reports of the Aurora
Borealis (Northern Lights) being seen in some areas in northern Scotland and
that someone had posted a picture of a faint glow in the northern skies
somewhere close to Boat of Garten, just up the road. A similar call the following night tempted me
to dash to the lower car park on Cairngorm but all to no avail. The phone call on the evening of 27th
though was very different – “It’s happening now, it’s amazing, wow, go out asap
to see it….” and within minutes I was in the car
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| The best part of the Aurora Borealis display |
complete with camera and
tripod, heading out of Nethybridge so as to lose the street lights and to get a
better view of the northern sky. Before
I had stopped I could see the vivid greens of the Aurora very clearly and something I had tried
hard for years to see was there before me shimmering brilliantly over the low
hills to the north. Car parked, lights
off, camera out and pointing north, then north-west then north-east, pointing
the camera to where the most vivid colours were occurring. The predominant colour was green with the
occasional addition of red, the semi-circular display being topped by a reddish
glow. At 8.15pm the colours
 |
| The main Aurora display |
became very
bright and to the north-east a lot of red started to appear. A few folk had stopped their car in a lay-by
on the other side of the road and all you could hear was “Amazing, Wow, Look at
That” as the reds and greens became ever more vivid. Pictures were being recorded by the camera
every 15 to 20 seconds, the time it was taking to make each exposure, and
looking at the camera screen it was obvious that it was recording much more
colour than was obvious to the naked eye.
By 8.30pm the red colour was less intense and by 8.45 the Aurora was predominantly
green with faint redness still visible above the outer arc of the display. The lights of a house at the end of the track
on which I had parked made a nice focal point as I tried to continue to capture
the most intense areas of the display, and the glow of light from Grantown
helped to distinguish the contour of the hills.
By 9.15 I had just about exhausted the photo options and with the Aurora
starting to fade I thought it time to nip back home to see what the photos looked
like just in case I needed to go back out to take more. The 8.15 photos were the most vivid and
colourful and whilst still viewing them
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| Martine Croxall about to announce the "stunning photo" |
on my laptop I decided to email a
couple off to BBC Pictures just to
see if I could emulate Laura who managed to get a snow drift photo onto their
gallery a year or so ago. Job done, or
so I thought until the phone rang, with a lady from the BBC asking for a little
more information about the location of the photo, whether genuine (not
photo-shopped) etc, and it was only when I had put the phone down that I
realised I hadn’t asked where the photo might be shown. The 10-o’clock news was just ending so I
thought it might be shown to introduce the weather forecast, and whilst the Aurora was mentioned the
photo wasn’t shown. It would probably be
on the viewers’ gallery so I let Laura know what had happened. She emailed back to say that my photo had
been “tweeted” by BBC News and that by 10.30pm 1450 folk had seen it and
re-tweeted it (though not too sure what all that means!). Perhaps it would be on the weather forecast
on BBC News 24, so whilst sorting out a
couple of fungi from earlier in the day I had the news on in the
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| The "stunning photo from Nethybridge" on TV |
background. And then it happened... In the background I could hear Martine
Croxall mention that the Beeb was getting lots of reports about the evening’s
Aurora Borealis and here were a few photos sent in by viewers. I think there were five in all and the last
one was “this stunning photo from Nethybridge”!
I just failed to get my camera operating in time to capture the event
from the TV screen, so I carried on working away until at half twelve the
Aurora was mentioned again and this time I was ready. I set the camera to Auto and fired off a
couple of practice shots of Martine and as she said for the second time “this
stunning photo from Nethybridge” I pressed the button and had my photo – of
“the stunning photo”! Amazingly the BBC
News photo was re-tweeted 3151 times and was 1845 folks favourite. What an evening and thank you Laura.
That’s it for another
month, enjoy the read.
Hopefully everything will go okay, but with the ending of Windows XP
everything currently is being moved to a new laptop where we will learn all
about Windows 7 – fingers crossed for the next blog! Sorry about the strange location of the scarlet elf-cup photos - beyond my control!
Stewart and Janet
Highland Biological Recording Group
and how to join HBRG
Ascomycetes in Colour by Peter Thompson
Strathspey Railway
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| Sparrowhawk in garden |
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| Hazel catkins and pollen |
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| A flooded Insh Marshes from Inshriach forest |
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| They're back - Metacoleroa dickiei fungus on twinflower leaves |
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| Drumsticks moss (Aulacomnium androgynum) on rotting wood |
Photos © Stewart Taylor
